HEFEI, China: Ultramodern factories churn out electric cars and solar panels in Hefei, an industrial center in the heart of central China. Hefei and nearby towns have become an EV manufacturing hub, with overall car production nearly tripling since 2019 and now exceeding Michigan’s. Hefei’s industrial policies have been so successful in nurturing technology manufacturers that the country’s central government has embraced tenets of what is known as the Hefei model. The city government has provided $2 billion of the $2.5 billion needed to build China’s first factories for an advanced kind of computer memory chip. Sales of these leases, the cornerstone of local government budgets in China, typically cover half of Hefei’s municipal spending.

Source: Economic Times January 28, 2024 13:54 UTC